


Comedown

by Azellma



Series: Chains Anthology [2]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Chains one-shot, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-30 04:14:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14488566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azellma/pseuds/Azellma
Summary: Part of the Chains anthology. Short little fic that could fall almost anywhere in the Chains timeline.





	Comedown

Sloan woke at some unknown hour, and he wasn’t in bed beside her.  
  
He was not what she would have called a “good sleeper”. In Goodneighbor he kept his own irregular hours, on what appeared to be something like a twenty-eight hour schedule — but that differed wildly depending on what he was taking. On the road he was better at it, just because their sleep periods had to align, at least in part. He took his watch like anyone else, and slept when she took hers.  
  
So it was not unusual for him to be awake. It _was_ unusual for him to leave her in bed alone. If he wanted to party while she wanted to sleep, she would go to her room at the Rexford. That was why she _had_ the room at the Rexford, still, after all these weeks.  
  
She sat up in bed, and wished she had a pistol or something. She wouldn’t _need_ it, not with all those guards outside the door, but it would have settled her nerves to be armed. She’d spent too long in the wilderness to not be wary.  
  
She turned, letting her eyes wander through the darkness. There were a few shafts of light creeping through the boarded-up windows but it did little to break up the night. And then she saw one shadow stir in front of another, and froze.  
  
“Hancock?” She swallowed.  
  
The shadow detached itself from the bottom of the far wall, and drifted closer until she could see his face in a shaft of light. He looked… almost guilty. Scared, and sad. She reached for him, finding his hands in the darkness and pulling him closer. He slipped into bed beside her, and she put her arms around his neck, hooked an ankle behind his knee, pulled him as close as she could.  
  
He bent his head to rest his cheek against her shoulder, but he was stiff, tight like a violin string about to snap.  
  
“What is it?” she asked.  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
“John.”  
  
“Just… there was a moment, when I thought I was falling asleep.” He hesitated. “I don’t know what it was. Something about the come-down mixed with dozing and the sex hormones, and… I felt… wrong, in my head. Just for a couple of seconds.”  
  
She didn’t ask what he meant by _wrong_. He wouldn’t be able to adequately explain it, and the attempt would only frustrate them both.  
  
And anyway, she could guess.  
  
“You’re not going feral,” she said quietly.  
  
“I will one day.”  
  
“No, you won’t. Plenty of ghouls live more than a hundred years.”  
  
“Plenty _more_ go feral. And the younger you are, the worse your chances.” He raised his head from her shoulder to rest it next to hers on the pillow, his dark eyes sad. “I ain’t been a ghoul for that long, sweetheart. And I take a lot of chems. What if they really _do_ rot your brains?”  
  
“That’s not how it works. It’s… radiation, or something. Right?”  
  
“Who fucking knows.” He sighed. “Christ. I just don't wanna turn feral in your arms, all right?” She saw his face twist into a grimace, and he looked away. “ _Fuck_.”  
  
“John —”  
  
“And don’t say it won’t happen. You don’t know that.”  
  
She bent her head, pressing her forehead against his shoulder so he couldn’t see her face.  
  
“You want me to shoot you if you go feral?” she asked, fighting to keep the waver from her voice.  
  
He swore, and tightened his arms around her waist, his fingernails biting into her skin.  
  
“Course not. Get someone else to do it. One of the guards.”  
  
“It should be me.”  
  
“Sunshine.” He put a hand to her cheek, tilting her face up so he could see her, his thumb brushing across her bottom lip. “That ain’t gonna happen. I ain't asking you to do that.”  
  
“I wouldn’t let anyone else do it,” she replied. “It should be me.”  
  
He didn’t fight her further on it, and she knew he wouldn’t. There was something intimate, in a dark and deeply twisted way, about killing someone. It would be the greatest gift she could give him, to be the one to put him down.  
  
“I love you,” she said. “You know that?”  
  
“Yeah. I know.”

 

 


End file.
